w • m. 



BY ELIZABETH WILSON 









.'k '• I*.'*.- • •-.:• » . -^.*ci'.->.V. 




ClassIBVj_570 

m . G 5 W 5 

Copyright^?. 



CDBKIGHT DEPOSIT. 




Frances C. Gage at the time of graduation from 
college, 1890 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

Experiences in the Life of 
Frances C. Gage 



BY 

ELIZABETH WILSON 

AUTHOR OF "FIFTY TEARS OF ASSOCIATION WORK 
AMONG YOUNG WOMEN" 



•SMM6KSI 




THE WOMANS PRESS 

600 LEXINGTON AVENUE 

NEW YORK 

1918 



"V 









Copyright, 1918, by 

The National Board of 

The Young Women's Christian Associations 

of the United States of America 

600 Lexington Avenue 

New York City 



-JUL 15 1918 

©CI.A493778 



INTRODUCTION 

FEW are granted the opportunity, 
and even a smaller number have 
the ability, to impress their personality 
upon two continents ; Prances Gage pos- 
sessed both to a marked degree. 
Whether among her fellow students, a 
teacher upon the faculty of a college, a 
promoter of an international organiza- 
tion, or a missionary in the heart of 
Asia Minor, by her inherent ability, her 
contagious devotion and her heroic con- 
secration to the cause to which she gave 
her life, she was a mighty force. 

It is an interesting fact that three 
outstanding women fitted for their task 

by Carleton College should have found 

... 
in 



INTRODUCTION 

themselves at the same station in Ana- 
tolia, and that two of them — Miss King 
and Miss Gage — should there make the 
supreme sacrifice for the cause of Christ 
and humanity, while the third, Miss 
Willard, remained at her post during 
the war while the storm of conflict, pes- 
tilence and persecution raged about her. 
Some lives become distinguished 
through length of service ; others, by the 
intensity of fewer years. The life here 
briefly sketched was characterized by 
the intensity of its devotion and the 
heroism and completeness of its sacri- 
fice. The writer of this little book has 
not pictured to the full the self -forget- 
ful daring which led Miss Gage again 
and again, sometimes alone and some- 
times accompanied by her intimate 
friend, Miss Willard, into situations 

iv 



INTRODUCTION 

from which strong men might well have 
shrunk, and yet where duty seemed to 
call. 

This little story is filled with romance, 
while it portrays the life of a great, big 
heart, balanced by a rare intelligence, in 
a woman not physically strong but with 
the courage and consecration of the 
apostles of old. Some thought Miss 
Gage was burying her splendid talent 
when she went to Turkey as a mission- 
ary, but now we see that through the los- 
ing of her life she found it in glorious 
abundance, both for the period in which 
she lived, and for the years of recon- 
struction yet to come in that stricken 
land. She marked out the path by 
which others may find the way to the 
field of boundless service. 

I know of no more fitting story to put 



INTRODUCTION 

into the hands of the young women of 
our institutions of learning than this 
record of an able devoted life, filled with 
Christian daring, and triumphant in its 
appeal to the womanhood of two con- 
tinents for the redemption of the de- 
pressed womanhood of the East. 

James L. Barton. 

Boston, May 3, 1918. 



VI 



ATTTHOB'S NOTE 

Many of Frances Gage's letters were 
marked 'not for publication.' Many- 
experiences or interpretations of experi- 
ences were never written because of the 
impossibility of sending them through 
the mails. Contradictory reports have 
been received about several events. The 
story can never be fully told until after 
the war is over and Miss Willard can 
correct or supplement it. Yet even 
with these limitations it is thought ad- 
visable to publish this brief account in 
order that 'her devotion to duty and her 
splendid Christian daring' may bring 
inspiration to young women of this 
time. 

vn 





CONTENTS 




CHAPTER 

Introduction 


PAGE 

iii 




Author's Note . . 


vii 


I. 


The Girl that Grew Up 


1 


II. 


Something More Than a Tourist . 


25 


III. 


In the New United States . 


47 


IV. 


The Last Stretch .... 


73 


V. 


The Exploration and the Enter- 
prise 


107 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Frances C. Gage at the time of graduation 

from college, 1890 . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

An araba — 'A cross between a prairie 

schooner and a circus chariot ' . . 30 

Cabinet of the Young Women's Christian 
Association, American Collegiate In- 
stitute, Smyrna 84 

View of Constantinople College, showing 

buildings already completed . . 100 

Postcard mailed on her last journey . . 102 



CHAPTER I 

THE GIEL THAT GREW UP 



CHAPTER I 

T TOW far back should one go to un- 
-*• -*■ derstand the road ahead? If the 
road is the way of life of a real person 
one should certainly go back to the 
starting point of the journey. And 
Frances Cousens Gage was a real per- 
son. She was a woman who repre- 
sented the best of America to girls in 
Turkey. More than that, she made peo- 
ple in America who did not even want 
to hear about Turkey, come to the real- 
ization that the young women of the Ot- 
toman Empire could also obtain the 
best, because where Christian forces are 
at work, women are sure to come into 
their own. 

3 



THE EOAD AHEAD 

Her starting point in life was Quincy, 
Massachusetts, in the stirring days of 
the sixties. This New England inher- 
itance brought vigor of body and mind, 
'the active soul/ in fact; it gave her a 
humorous courage which made light of 
circumstances visibly doleful and dis- 
couraging ; it provided that quality now 
known as tenacity of purpose which our 
New England ancestors were satisfied 
to call 'grit'; it meant religious train- 
ing and an unquestioned reliance upon 
the providences of God. Quincy itself 
was a significant birthplace for this 
Frances Gage whom we always think of 
as a hopeful traveler along hard roads, 
for from Quincy to tidewater ran the 
first railway in the United States ; five 
miles of granite and wood and iron, con- 

4 



THE GIEL THAT GREW' UP 

structed to supply material for the 
Bunker Hill Monument in Boston. 

Then the family journeyed out to 
Mankato, Minnesota, where Mr. Gage 
was called to organize a new normal 
school, and it must have seemed to their 
friends that they were going to the 
jumping-off place, and a very frightful 
jumping-off place at that, for Mankato 
had been the center of the Indian Raids 
of 1862, and the experiences of the 
Western settlers were only too well 
known, even in New England. Eastern 
friends would not have been reassured 
by her later choice of a college town, for 
Northfield was the scene of a bank rob- 
bery and assassination, accomplished by 
a notorious bandit a few years later ; in 
fact that is all some people know about 
this beautiful town, the seat of Carleton 

5 



THE BOAD AHEAD 

College. Whether tales of massacres 
and murders in quiet villages had any- 
thing to do with Frances Gage's phe- 
nomenal courage, both in the matter of 
personal safety and in pioneer under- 
takings, one cannot say. What one can 
say is that no one can ever remember 
her being afraid of anything. She cer- 
tainly was not afraid of hard work, or 
of facing an issue squarely. This is the 
reason why she became a well-educated 
woman instead of one half -prepared for 
life, and why she developed into a rec- 
ognized religious leader instead of re- 
maining a make-believe Christian. But 
this is the story of Carleton and must be 
told as such. 

Carleton College is an almost perfect 
example of the ' co-educational denomi- 
national college of the Middle West.' 

6 



THE GIRL THAT GREW UP 

Such colleges have furnished leaders for 
every type of Christian enterprise in the 
Americas, and the distant isles and con- 
tinents. 

Mathematically speaking the most 
valuable asset of the college was its as- 
tronomical observatory, with the com- 
putations and publications there ef- 
fected. Reckoning, however, in finer 
values than even those delicate instru- 
ments could gauge, the most precious as- 
set was its faculty, and in colleges where 
young women bore off honors without 
surprise or apology, it was not unseemly 
that its most distinguished member 
should be a woman; Dean Evans, she 
would be called to-day, but in those days 
she bore the title ' Preceptress and Pro- 
fessor of English Literature and Mod- 
ern Languages.' 

7 



THE EOAD AHEAD 

College and preparatory students 
shared alike in the instruction of their 
teachers, and in all the college life. The 
girls lived in Gridley Hall, the well- 
appointed Ladies' Hall, which was a 
very vestibule to that world of culture 
and learning which the * 'teen age' girls 
were entering. The old clock on the 
stairs came within the instant apprecia- 
tion of all, for had not everybody 
learned Longfellow's poem? But the 
photographs of foreign scenery and ar- 
chitecture and paintings which lined the 
corridors were an unimagined revela- 
tion of 

The glory that was Greece 

And the grandeur that was Rome 

Not very complimentary to herself 
were Frances' own recollections of what 
she was when she first went to Carleton 

8 



THE GIRL THAT GREW UP 

as a special preparatory student in 
1880, expecting that those two years 
would be a grand good time, made up of 
what story books had related that school 
girl life could be. 'I was a very ordi- 
nary girl myself, a very foolish board- 
ing school girl. ' She may have been a 
very ordinary girl but she was a very 
pretty girl with golden hair; the real 
old-fashioned silky golden hair that 
curled around her forehead. And be- 
cause she was so pretty and so clever 
she was sure to have a following in the 
pranks that she devised. If there were 
enough adventure attached to these 
pranks, they sometimes broke the rules 
with a loud crash. Among these adven- 
tures was the commencement exploit 
when an edict had been issued that 
undergraduates were not to accept 

9 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

invitations to go driving. While faculty, 
seniors, alumni and guests were en- 
gaged in the decorous delights of 
commencement dinner, an expedition of 
unchaperoned girls set off, each with a 
gallant escort, who had appeared with a 
single carriage and pair at the very 
steps of Gridley Hall itself. This high- 
handedness was rather entertaining to 
her for at least a part of the summer 
afternoon that they spent in the country, 
but it was a very repentant Frances who 
came out from Miss Evans ' room later 
on. 

Her golden hair was the basis of one 
of her standing jokes. Her mother's 
old home was Sweden, Maine; hence 
when polite and bashful young men 
would be introduced to her at the col- 
lege ' socials' and begin: 

10 



THE GIRL THAT GREW UP 

' Where do you come from, Miss 
Gage?' she would seriously reply: 

'We come from Sweden. You see, 
there be many Scandinavians now in 
St. Paul, Min-ne-so-ta.' The golden 
hair and blue eyes made them believe 
this for at least a minute. 

Girls living forty years later, who 
hear i reverence for personality' contin- 
ually referred to by religious leaders, in 
their efforts to help each individual 
make that approach to Jesus Christ 
which shall mean for her fullness of life 
and development of character, can 
hardly understand the situation in 
which Frances Gage had found herself 
when she was twelve. There had been 
a great revival meeting in St. Paul, con- 
ducted by a famous lay-preacher and his 
companion ' singing-evangelist. ' Only 

11 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

one way of entrance into the Christian 
life was pointed out. 'If thou shalt con- 
fess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and 
shalt believe in thine heart that God 
hath raised him from the dead, thou 
shalt be saved. ' 

Confession meant public testimony 
and uniting with the church. And be- 
cause Frances Gage was brought up in 
a Christian home, and joined the 
church with the rest of the girls after 
the great revival, no one found out until 
she told it herself long afterward, that 
she knew then that she was not a Chris- 
tian and did not really care to be. 

But at Carleton things began to shape 
themselves. In between her studies and 
her jolly times, she was watching the 
people who were making the Christian 
college; the faculty and the older stu- 

12 



THE GIRL THAT GREW UP 

dents whom she admired. She could 
see what estimate thoughtful people 
placed upon Christianity, upon Christ 
Himself. Then she grew into a truer 
knowledge of herself and her needs. 
She saw how wrong she had been and 
that she could not set herself right, and 
she was glad to accept Jesus as her per- 
sonal Saviour. Thus she learned that 
entering the Christian life is a great ac- 
ceptance and not a great renunciation, 
and was eager to find out what God had 
for her next. 

In point of time her 'next' was a year 
of study in the St. Paul training school 
for teachers, and three years of teach- 
ing first in the grades, then in the train- 
ing school itself. In point of character 
construction, her 'next' was the educa- 
tional issue, an issue which has ship- 

13 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

wrecked many a girl as promising as 
she. On one side she was in line of pro- 
motion in the training school, she had 
no money to use for study, she was al- 
ready as old as most of the students who 
were graduating, diplomas in hand. On 
the other side she had health, the kind 
of ambition which any Christian girl in 
America has a right to muster, and 
many friends at Carleton. The enter- 
prise did not mean going away to col- 
lege so much as going back to Carleton. 
Carleton won. 

Her economic basis for entering upon 
her regular college course in 1886, was 
laughably aired in a speech she made 
at a convention many years later: 
6 There is nothing so dear to my heart as 
the subject of finances. I believe it is 
because I didn't have any finances when 

14 



THE GIRL THAT GREW UP 

I was born. I entered college without 
finances ; I ended college with a debt ; I 
was burdened with it. At first I was 
economical — I said I wasn't able to do 
this and I wasn't able to do that, and 
I soon saw that I was going to be out of 
life, unless I changed my attitude/ 

To be sure in those days, wisdom, 
whose price is above rubies, was adver- 
tised in dollars and cents at $32.00 for 
tuition and incidentals for the three 
terms, and $3.50 weekly for room and 
board at Gridley Hall, making the ex- 
penses 'per year about $165.00/ She 
was able to earn some money during her 
course; she taught, clerked, sewed, and 
computed for astronomical records. 
She abridged her course by a year and 
entered the junior class from the fresh- 
man ranks. She certainly was not 'out 

15 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

of life.' The college annual, which she 
helped inaugurate, and named ' Algol,' 
as it might prove to be a variable star, 
and the student paper, 'The Carletonia,' 
are brimful of her deeds. 

In a class in public speaking, for ex- 
ample, one of the seniors delivered an 
oration of the perfervid type on 
'Duluth the Zenith City, ' which was out- 
done the next day by a resident of Min- 
neapolis rehearsing the virtues of her 
native soil. On the day following Miss 
Gage read an essay on 'The Metropolis ' 
which every one supposed was her own 
city St. Paul. But the audience was 
filled with amazement when she an- 
nounced at the close that she had de- 
scribed New York and not St. Paul, be- 
cause it needed a boom more than St. 

16 



THE GIRL THAT GREW UP 

Paul, and because it had paid her bet- 
ter. 

She was a charter member of the 
Gamma Delta Literary Society and ap- 
peared in debate and oration on its pub- 
lic occasions. Her college orations on 
'The Human Polygon' and ' Woman's 
Conservative Energy vs. Her Radical 
Energy/ and her graduating oration, 
'The Philosophy of Effort/ are like 
texts for her subsequent career. She 
was a Shakespearian Portia or a 
Mother Goose character, as the social 
function required. She was president 
of her class of four women and seven 
men as well as of all the women's 
organizations. She was a delegate to 
various Young Women's Christian 
Association conventions, presiding or 
reading the paper which she had f aith- 

17 



THE BOAD AHEAD 

fully prepared. Of course she was vale- 
dictorian of her class and of course when 
a chapter of the intercollegiate honor 
society Phi Beta Kappa was granted to 
Carleton, more than a score of years 
later, she was elected an alumni mem- 
ber, and thought of her golden key as 
quite worth while in student gatherings. 

What an older sister she was for 
younger girls, especially for those whose 
confidences revealed that they were 
passing through the same experiences 
she had known in those first early years 
at Carleton! 

What a refreshing, satisfying friend 
she was with like-minded people, those 
who enjoyed actually working together 
at life-sized tasks. She left behind at 
Carleton that commencement day of 
1890 two friends in particular: Char- 

18 



THE GIRL THAT GREW UP 

lotte R. Willard, assistant in the mathe- 
matics department, and Martha, or 
Marlie, King of the class of 1891. One 
of their co-labors was in the Young 
Women's Christian Association, not the 
local Association alone but the state As- 
sociation of Minnesota. Miss Gage was 
treasurer and from her home in St. Paul 
she used to send out receipts written in 
purple ink, in wide angular letters 
which showed, as one picked up the en- 
velope, that what her hand found to do 
she did with her might. The little state 
committee had that year its first experi- 
ence in calling a state secretary, who 
came one bitter February day across the 
Wisconsin border for a few months of 
visitation and organization; and who, 
like everyone else, fell under the spell 
of Frances Gage, whose efficiency was 

19 



THE KOAD AHEAD 

matched only by her charm, and whose 
Christianity was as deep as it was wide. 

We did not have then the word ' per- 
sonality' coined for that dynamic of 
character which she possessed, and 
which seemed to leap up whenever her 
name was mentioned, especially among 
those who were proposing to ask her to 
assume some new responsibility. We 
simply said ' Isn't Frances Gage won- 
derful?' 

Sometimes she was ashamed that she 
was so comfortable, — not conventional 
for she was never that. One evening we 
were coming back from a state commit- 
tee meeting in Minneapolis, where the 
amateur state secretary had been intro- 
duced to Miss Willard, the chairman, 
and the other committee members, and 
we left the interurban car on a corner 

20 



THE GIRL THAT GEEW UP 

across from a Gospel Mission. A faith- 
ful worker had brought a plaintive cab- 
inet organ out to the curb and was play- 
ing and leading a hymn with but feeble 
assistance from his one or two compan- 
ions. 'Come on/ she said with a 
chuckle, and we darted across and sang 
as loud as we could, until more workers 
could assemble and gather a crowd for 
the hall. 

' Wouldn't my pupils be scandalized 
to see Miss Gage singing gospel hymns 
on the street?' she commented between 
verses. 

Presently we walked on quietly, arm 
in arm. Each was thinking : In what 
kind of a world does one Christian think 
she is graciously condescending when 
she deigns to stand by an even braver 

21 



THE KOAD AHEAD 

witness to the Gospel than she is her- 
self? Why should we sing 

We are not divided, 
All one body we, 

when we are doing our best to fix hori- 
zontal strata among God's own people, 
each esteeming herself a little better 
than the other, a little more righteous 
or a little more charitable % 

By the spring of 1892 she began to 
feel that she could transfer her profes- 
sion of teaching to some of the foreign 
fields where the Congregational Church 
had mission stations. Positions in a 
boys' school in China were proposed to 
her and Martha King. Miss Gage had 
relinquished her hope of a fellowship 
in the new University of Chicago, and 
was deliberating between the China of- 
fer and another from the Girls' School 

22 



THE GIRL THAT GREW UP 

in Marsovan, Turkey, when the bank in 
St. Paul in which were deposited all her 
savings toward paying off her college 
debt suddenly failed. Her father's af- 
fairs were also involved. Going away 
from home was out of the question. 
Someone else must go to China. The 
school in Turkey could wait. 

' Anyway, I would rather teach girls 
than boys,' said Frances Gage. 



23 



CHAPTER II 

SOMETHING MOEE THAN A TOUKIST 



CHAPTER II 

DEPARTUKES : 
August 5th, 1893, from Boston, 
Miss Frances C. Gage, Miss Martha A. 
King, both of Minnesota, to join the 
Western Turkey Mission at Marsovan. 

ARRIVALS OUT : 

September 14th, at Constantinople, 
Miss Frances C. Gage, Miss Martha A. 
King. 

September 21st, at Marsovan, West- 
ern Turkey, Miss Frances C. Gage, 
Miss Martha A. King. ' 

This was the next stretch in the Road 
Ahead. It meant an Atlantic journey, 
sightseeing in England for a fortnight, 
the long water route from Liverpool to 

27 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

Constantinople and a two days' trip on 
the Black Sea to Samsoun, all delight- 
ful enough to all intelligent persons 
especially if, like themselves, they were 
neither seasick nor homesick. But 
they added to the tourist interests of the 
American school teacher on her first 
trip 6 abroad,' the already quickened 
missionary instincts; and when in Ox- 
ford, they sighed that the vast revenues 
of some of her twenty-one heavily en- 
dowed colleges might not be diverted 
for missionary work, and thrilled as 
they stood before the Martyrs' Me- 
morial and realized that the same Gos- 
pel they were taking to Turkey had 
made Cranmer and Ridley and Latimer 
meet death bravely. 

Their steamer was quarantined in the 
Jiarbor of Samsoun, for cholera was 

28 



MOKE THAN A TOURIST 

abroad in the land. Neither was it a 
peaceful country to which they had 
come. In February, the building of the 
Girls' School. in Marsovan had been 
burned, and a conflict between terrorists 
and civil authorities had taken place 
this very month of September, just as 
the party from the American Mission 
left for the coast to welcome the new ar- 
rivals. But epidemic disease and polit- 
ical struggle were incidental, and the 
girls responded heartily to the royal 
Oriental greetings. 

'Khosh gelding, Khosh gelding' ('you 
are welcome') said the pastor of the 
Samsoun church, as he approached 
them at the dock. They had learned 
one Turkish phrase and replied 'Khasta 
— but — due' ('we come gladly') from the 
bottom of their hearts. Off they all 

29 



THE EOAD AHEAD 

started, over the beautiful Anatolian 
Mountains, under the same blue sky that 
had arched above the first generation of 
Christians, 'the elect who are sojourn- 
ers of the Dispersion in Pontus' to 
whom the Apostle Peter had written a 
circular letter which we call his First 
Epistle. Four teams were necessary to 
carry all the passengers and their 
luggage and equipment for steamer 
and inland journey. The new spring 
wagon of the Mission led, then came the 
three gaily decorated springless native 
wagons, the araba — a cross between a 
prairie schooner and a circus chariot. 
By their sides walked the native Chris- 
tians who had welcomed them and who, 
with true Oriental courtesy, would show 
them out of town. Before, behind and 
all around them walked men, women 

30 







o3 
o 

CO 

O 



T5 

o3 

u 
o 

O 

o 
o 

02 



© 

© 

42 

CO 

o 

© 



03 

o3 







MORE THAN A TOURIST 

and children of the port city who were 
curious to see what kind of creatures 
these last arrivals might prove to be. 

As there were too many to ride in the 
spring wagon, the aristocracy of the 
cavalcade, they took turns in the democ- 
racy, the ardbas. Miss Gage wrote 
home that she could not describe that 
two days' journey because the English 
language lacked words. 

'You cannot think what it is like to 
climb these high mountains in a spring- 
less cart over roads- consisting largely 
of rocks the size of your head, with no 
soil to speak of between the stones. 
Neither do you know the effect upon 
one's internal construction of riding 
over a camel path down a mountain 
where the foot-prints of the camel are 

31 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

about a foot below the traditional sur- 
face of the ground/ 

Friendly appreciation was the basis 
for their complete identification later 
on with people and things Turkish. 
Their consternation at meeting and 
passing a train of loaded camels on a 
precipice was soon forgotten in their 
enjoyment of the refreshing green trees 
which they saw in the distance. Their 
unsuccessful efforts to sleep in a khan 
with camels, horses, donkeys and cattle 
below them, and inquisitive human so- 
ciety beside them were forgotten as soon 
as daybreak called them to their morn- 
ing meal of sweet white grapes and good 
native bread. And so they came to 
Marsovan where the seminary and hos- 
pital and boys' college and girls' school 
of sixty-five pupils testified to the two 

32 



MORE THAN A TOURIST 

score years of splendid administration 
of the American Board. They identi- 
fied themselves with their new country 
by studying Turkish, although in such 
a Babel of tongues it was difficult to 
decide what was best, but within a fort- 
night they had settled down to master 
the language. Miss Gage's progress, in 
spite of occasional diversions, such as 
the laying of the corner stone of the 
new school building, and steady diver- 
sions, such as teaching four classes a 
day, was doubly complimented. One of 
the veteran missionaries remarked not 
long afterward, ' She can write Turkish 
now as fast as Hagopian can read it.' 
The admiring pupils said, ' Oh, you will 
learn quickly. God is with you!' 

They identified themselves with their 
pupils' lives. It was quite the thing to 

33 






THE ROAD AHEAD 

come to the new beautiful ' white college 
on the hill, ' as the girls insisted on call- 
ing the institution. But their teachers 
always denied the title, and said they 
had no ambition to make it a great insti- 
tution. It was not a college, but a good 
fitting school for a practical Christian 
life — the kind of Christian life that was 
to be lived by girls in Turkey; for a 
good, true heart, with a sensible mind, 
was good enough in any country as a 
basis for life here and hereafter, but 
here both must be trained or neither 
would be found. Daily study of the 
Bible, the King's Daughters' circles 
which Miss King reorganized, Miss 
Gage's normal class of eleven town girls 
who taught Sunday-school classes at 
home every week, all these told in the 
girls' lives and they began to pray and 

34 






MORE THAN A TOURIST 

speak from their hearts, not with the 
fine set speeches and formal prayers 
which had earlier distressed their 
teachers in the social meetings. 

They identified themselves with their 
new friends in the perils of massacre 
always dreaded, which grew more acute 
in the autumn of 1895. Over a hun- 
dred students — boarding and day 
pupils — were enrolled in the school that 
season, and protecting these meant 
watchman duty at night for the Amer- 
ican principal and her devoted assist- 
ant, although she pretended that put- 
ting out the fires, which they found 
again and again, meant little more than 
exercise in the practice of throwing 
water. Conversations were reported 
from among the Turks to this effect, 

35 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

'When our little affair comes off where 
will you go?' 

'I'll go to the American compound. 
Where will you go?' 

'Ill go there too.' 

'When we get there where will you 
go?' 

'I'll go for the treasury. Where will 
you go?' 

' I '11 go to the Girls ' School. ' 

One Friday noon the storm burst. 
Miss Gage and President White went to 
the tower of the school and heard the 
shots strike ping, ping, against the 
tower wall. She went to the school-room 
where the girls sat in their places at her 
command, hanging upon her look and 
action with helpless appealing gaze. 
They stayed only a few minutes in this 
room which was nearest the gate just 

36 






MORE THAN A TOURIST 

beyond which the murdering was going 
on, but they had to wait while it was 
being ascertained whether an attack 
was being made upon other parts of the 
premises. She was alone with the girls 
while the shots were coming so near that 
it seemed as if they were right in the 
room, and she could only wait and pray 
that the fate of the screaming victims a 
few rods away might not come to her 
girls. 

But the mob was turned away and 
five days later it was considered safe to 
send back to their homes in the city 
such day pupils as could not arrange to 
enter as boarders. Except on that Fri- 
day afternoon not even a recitation 
hour was omitted. 'It was the best way 
to keep our school ready for whatever 
God might send.' 

37 



THE EOAD AHEAD 

They identified themselves with the 
suffering people in the black days that 
followed. At the school there was a 
constant strain on their sympathies, 
since they must break bad home news 
first to one pupil then to another. In 
the city, there were bereavement, fear 
and misery, and poverty such that for 
two years or more relief measures were 
necessary. On one of Martha King's 
visits to the city to distribute flour she 
was exposed to smallpox, and contracted 
a violent case of the disease. There 
was no American doctor at the station 
then, and to no avail did Miss Gage and 
Miss Willard, who was spending her 
Sabbatical year with the two Carleton 
women, use all the resources at their 
command. If the people of the school 
who had known her a little over two 

38 



MORE THAN A TOUKIST 

years could say, 'In her departure, how 
much sunshine have we lost ! ' what could 
Frances Gage say, who had been a col- 
lege friend of 'Marlie' King, an Asso- 
ciation fellow-worker, and a missionary 
colleague ? 

For that summer, the American 
Board granted an extra vacation period 
which made possible a trip to Europe. 
Vienna and Innsbruck and Munich were 
visited and three weeks were spent in 
Lucerne. Poor Miss Gage owned to be- 
ing ashamed that her interest in scenery 
and art collections was intensified by 
the fact of their location. Just so much 
nearer as the mountains and the gal- 
leries were to the United States, so much 
more beautiful were they to her home- 
sick eyes. A vacation party of Carle- 
ton tourists met them there with news 

39 



THE BOAD AHEAD 

of home friends and affairs, and finally 
the American Board cabled permission 
to Miss Willard to return as a member 
of the Western Turkey Mission. 

Not even in Turkey is life all crises. 

With the school work well set up, the 
women teachers shared in visits to some 
of the 'out stations' of the Mission from 
time to time. From one place where 
the massacre had swept away one hun- 
dred and fifty men and boys, they 
brought back eight orphans for whom 
the school-girls learned to make gar- 
ments from the gingham which was 
woven as a part of the relief work. 
From another place, a pupil would be 
recruited. 

Sometimes there would be an evening 
service in the crude chapel, where the 
one light on the pulpit table shone on 

40 



MORE THAN A TOURIST 

the dusky faces and humble dress of a 
hundred earnest men and women, who 
had struggled through rain and mud 
and darkness for the words of cheer 
which the missionaries had brought. 

This was not pleasure traveling, as 
they penetrated to rude little villages 
whose inhabitants had never before seen 
American or European ladies. A spe- 
cial charge had been laid upon them to 
seek out the very hamlets of mountain 
and valley. The women of the six mil- 
lion non-Moslem population were ac- 
cessible to a Gospel brought to their 
doors, even if the women of the sixteen 
million Mohammedan adherents were 
still shut up in ignorance and polygamy 
and kept away from their true place in 
the social life of Turkey. 

Sometimes their route would lie over 

41 



THE KOAD AHEAD 

hot and dusty plains, with a tempera- 
ture well above ninety degrees Fahren- 
heit, or among great rocks, where the 
walls of an old fortified castle might be 
seen, a trace, no doubt, of an ancient 
Genoese stronghold, occupied now only 
by the storks nesting on the turrets. 
At another time the road led straight up 
and over a sharp ridge of rocks, then 
skirted along a sidling hill cut with gul- 
lies which made the crossing most diffi- 
cult. On such occasions, a score or 
more in number, the women and chil- 
dren got out and walked ahead while 
the men, leading the horses, hanging on 
the upper side of the araba, holding 
on to the lower side, and pushing from 
behind, brought the wagons over one at 
a time. Again the road followed the 
bed of a mountain torrent, the carts 

42 



MORE THAN A TOURIST 

plowed along in heavy sand or bumped 
down one bank and struggled up the 
other, worked up the stream or forded 
it. 

At the end of one five-hour climb, 
they reached the station which the Gov- 
ernment had placed on the top of the 
mountain for the protection of travel- 
ers. This was in the midst of a pitch 
pine forest; a perfect carpet of soft 
grass and ferns under the trees, the 
roadsides a glory of flowers, and 
through it all the singing of the nightin- 
gales. A khan offered less attractive 
shelter so they slept in their wagons in 
this lofty paradise, if one may call a 
place a paradise which required a sol- 
dier mounting guard over them. 

Hospitality worthy of the hardship 
of the journey often awaited them. 

43 



THE BOAD AHEAD 

First an outrider on horseback bringing 
salutations and a supply of fresh food, 
then the whole Protestant community, 
perhaps one family, perhaps more. 
One must remember that these distant 
places which one hastily terms 'God 
forsaken ' were not at all out of reach 
of his people or his plan. Some of 
these church members were probably 
more interested in the extension of 
Christ's Kingdom than some of the 
people of the United States, whose in- 
different contributions supported the 
Christian schools and missionaries 
whose preaching had brought these 
Christian congregations into being. 
After all, these expeditions were only 
side issues, though they soundly con- 
firmed Miss Gage in her conviction that 
the lines had fallen unto her in pleasant 

44 



MORE THAN A TOURIST 

places. Her real work was that of be- 
ing resident principal of a Christian 
school, and many and various were the 
means she used to develop 'the good, 
true heart and the sensible mind.' 
Here is one of her pictures : 

' I sit in our beautiful schoolroom 
this morning, chaperoning a class in 
Arabo-Turkish taught by a young man 
who graduated from Anatolia College 
last year. The schoolroom is a perfect 
joy; it is so bright and clean and sunny 
and the girls studying in their seats look 
fully absorbed. The girls reciting are 
not making an astonishing success, I 
think, of their work, and the young man 
appears rather resigned to his fate, as 
if he wanted to say, "Well, being girls, 
they can't learn." I think both parties 
will have to have a lecture. ' 

45 



THE EOAD AHEAD 

But the next year, Frances Gage, who 
had given thanks that she had inherited 
a good constitution and seemed able to 
do more work every day of her life, 
came to the end of her strength for a 
season. The 1898 record closed with 
this announcement: 

' Arrivals in the United States — Oc- 
tober 29 — at Boston, Miss Frances C. 
Gage, of the Western Turkey Mission/ 



46 



CHAPTER III 

IN THE NEW UNITED STATES 



CHAPTER III 

FjlROM an Old World seat of an- 
-*• tiquity embedded in the poetry 
and history of scores of centuries, to a 
section of the New World, which might 
be said to be in the very process of man- 
ufacture — this was the next turn in the 
Road Ahead. 

This was a dispiriting existence for 
an active soul like Frances Gage; ill- 
ness, visits to sanatoria, experiments in 
treatment with hope deferred, experi- 
ments at undertaking work again, with 
hope still further deferred. There was 
sad bereavement, too, for her mother 
died in February, 1899. The family 
removed to Oregon next year, where 

49 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

Frances visited them. She returned to 
Boston, helped a friend in the Smith 
College Observatory for a while, and 
then in 1902, moved permanently to 
Portland, Oregon. 

Here were mountains and roses and 
congenial society, and here, in the hap- 
piest way, she learned to identify her- 
self with the great Northwest. She 
gloried in telling conservative eastern- 
ers, among whom some might have sup- 
posed she, herself, had been lately num- 
bered, all the astounding figures of 
progress. One would like to introduce 
a new adjective — megantic, perhaps, 
for the ordinary American vocabulary 
seems insufficient. This is what she 
used to tell those of us who had not 
moved to that part of the country bag 
and baggage : 

50 



IN THE NEW UNITED STATES 

' The growth of the population in the 
Northwest ranged according to the last 
census from three hundred per cent, in 
some places to one thousand per cent, 
in others. 

'The great irrigation projects, open- 
ing to cultivation vast areas of desert 
land hitherto undeveloped, have created 
a rush of settlers that is sending the 
crowded trains west in double sections. 

i Scientific farming and fruit growing 
are attracting a fine class of college- 
bred men. It is said that Hood River 
(Oregon) has more college men than 
any city of its size in the country. The 
magnetism of the West attracts a class 
of educated women as well as men. 

'The extension of railroad mileage is 
worthy of note. With wonderful fore- 
sight, its agents detect the strategic 

51 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

points, project their twin steel rails into 
the desert and lo! before the tin cans 
left by the construction camps are 
cleaned away, the young city is fairly 
started. 9 

Any person with a scrap of imagina- 
tion likes to meet a returned missionary 
— not perhaps to hear an address, for 
the real person may not be revealed by 
that — as a platform speaker the re- 
turned missionary may be merely what 
she is often introduced as being, 'A 
representative of the Board.' But to 
know the returned missionary as a real 
woman, that is a different matter; to 
realize in looking at her that by merely 
shutting her eyes, she can transport 
herself to another continent and civili- 
zation, think in a different language, 
adopt unusual hours of working and 

52 



IN THE NEW UNITED STATES 

eating, and have relations of personal 
friendship and mutual affection with 
'the heathen' or i natives' as provincial 
folk at home insist upon calling the 
second or the sixtieth generation of 
Christians in a foreign land. But 
Frances Gage was more than a returned 
missionary. She was a returning mis- 
sionary, as her friends had reason to 
know. And while she was awaiting her 
chance to go back, a chance dependent 
upon her health and the Turkish situa- 
tion, she turned not to teaching, but to 
the work with which she had been iden- 
tified in Minnesota fifteen years before. 
Very natural it was for her to become 
the traveling secretary of the Young 
Women's Christian Association, first 
in Oregon, then in Washington and 
Idaho, and later, in Montana, as these 

53 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

four states were operated by the North- 
western Field Committee, of which she 
was executive. 

Whatever had to do with the life of 
young women was of interest to her. 
Especially did she like a movement, 
Christian in purpose, that could show 
practical accomplishments all the way 
along through using spiritual forces, 
and was distinctly a movement 'of 
young women, for young women, by 
young women.' She saw what an im- 
mediate power the Association could be 
in those cities in which all the civic 
framework was being constructed as 
rapidly and as permanently as if of 
steel and cement, and in colleges in 
which women were training for the 
leadership of an age that will out-race 
this one which has left us breathless. 

54 



IN THE NEW UNITED STATES 

This was the very year when the two 
national bodies were deciding to dis- 
continue, in order that the city and 
student Associations, which had formed 
them, might unite in one larger and 
better new national organization. It 
was a new leader for a new movement 
in a new field. But the outlook of her 
heart was toward Turkey. If girls in 
the United States needed a Young 
Women's Christian Association, what 
of the girls of the Ottoman Empire, the 
little girls who soon grew to be old 
women % 

Technically, she was no longer a 
teacher, but just as her maternal 
instincts had multiplied her value in 
the school, so her varied experience 
in teaching and mothering girls counted 
to her for success as administrator, 

55 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

She was incurably domestic. Some 
of the best talks a visiting secre- 
tary could have with her were in an off 
hour, when she was skillfully trimming 
a hat for her beloved little niece Eliza- 
beth, discussing new theories in relig- 
ious psychology, and spring i Hints to 
Home Dressmakers, ' as well as the need 
for able employed officers in the critical 
vacancies on her list. The field office 
at one time was a cozy apartment. 
There she mothered the younger mem- 
bers of the staff and took her teacups 
down for out-of-town callers who came 
to talk business and remained to talk 
life. Even the motherly duty of help- 
ing people here and there to see their 
faults and mend their ways was not 
omitted. 'Someone had to tell her 

56 



IN THE NEW UNITED STATES 

the truth, ' she would remark decisively, 
and take up the next issue. 

As to the work she accomplished, 
there was visitation and organization. 
The list of city Associations in Port- 
land, Seattle, and Spokane, was in- 
creased shortly by eight in all the four 
states included in her field. There was 
the establishment of the Northwestern 
Summer Conference, first meeting at 
Gearhart Park, later at Seaside, both 
on the Oregon coast, and the beginning 
of regular state conventions for some 
of the states concerned ; there was pub- 
lic speaking, in college chapels, in draw- 
ing rooms, and great evangelistic 
tabernacles, before chambers of com- 
merce and ministerial associations. 
When she spoke in an unorganized com- 
munity or in one in which a beginning 

57 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

had been made in a suite of rented 
rooms, happily becoming too small for 
the increasing work, she often spoke as 
if she were standing within the entrance 
of the new Portland building, through 
whose doors more than five thousand 
members came in and out seeking to get 
or seeking to give. She could visualize 
the rugs and pictures and the writing 
and reading tables ; the secretaries who 
were not called to run an institution but 
to work with people; the cafeteria for 
people in a hurry and the tea room for 
people who were tired, and the private 
dining room for people both busy and 
tired perhaps, who must discuss busi- 
ness affairs at mealtime ; and so on over 
the building from swimming pool and 
gymnasium to the highest guest rooms 
under the roof. 

58 



IN THE NEW UNITED STATES 

It was harder to describe the religious 
meetings and the dozen weekly Bible 
classes, the educational courses, nearly 
a score in number, courses in which 
fingers, as well as minds, could be occu- 
pied; the social gatherings at which 
every word in the title Young Women's 
Christian Association was lived up to. 
Most of all she loved to dwell upon the 
work for people not members, who came 
asking information about lodging, or 
employment, or other more intimate 
personal concerns; and upon all that 
was done outside the main building, in 
branches, industrial establishments, at 
railway terminals and trolley stations. 

We had not begun then to sing 'God 
is working his purpose out' as we sing 
it to-day. But she was doing more than 
singing; she was co-operating in work- 

59 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

ing out the divine purpose and two ele- 
ments never failed to appear in what- 
ever she did ; the element of travel and 
the protection of girls. 

Of course, she was an incessant trav- 
eler herself. We figured out one day 
together, traveling west, in a belated 
sleeping-car on what was locally termed 
'The route of the great big baked potato' 
that if she had started at a given hour 
from the California-Oregon line, where 
her territory began, had traveled up to 
Portland and Spokane, across the pan- 
handle of Idaho, over the great conti- 
nental divide of Montana, and east 
across its plains, she might have 
reached the Montana-Dakota boundary 
of her territory only to be greeted by the 
headquarters secretary who might have 
left New York City at the same starting 

60 



IN THE NEW UNITED STATES 

moment and come via Chicago and St. 
Paul to the same boundary line. This 
came out apropos of a hurry call from 
Montana to which she had not been able 
to respond, as she received it while in 
Southern Oregon. For the first Wash- 
ington state convention, some delegates 
traveled twenty-four hours coming to 
Bellingham, and twenty-four hours re- 
turning home. For the first summer 
conference, the six Montana delegates 
traveled each about fifteen hundred 
miles. 

Protection of girls — of the girl she 
would rather have said — meant to her 
the protection of the privileged college 
girl from the danger of easy satisfac- 
tions, a self -centered life and unsound 
reasons for forming opinions or con- 
duct; the protection of the unoccupied 

61 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

woman against her own leisure ; of the 
untaught girl against her own igno- 
rance; of the uncontrolled girl against 
her own impulses. She held that every 
girl was entitled to four vital experi- 
ences ; good health, a good time, a good 
mind, and eternal life, all these being 
founded from the beginning upon good 
morals and pinnacled in faith in Christ ; 
and that the Spirit of God was calling 
upon the Young Women's Christian 
Association to make this abundant life 
accessible- It could be done for 'The 
Association follows in the wake of the 
illuminating force of the Church of 
Christ/ 

With such a program in mind, she 
never lost sight of what is called 
1 Travelers' Aid' and with her solicitude 
for the safety of sensible girls who took 

62 



IN THE NEW UNITED STATES 

trips for school, for business or family 
affairs, and for silly girls who exposed 
themselves to temptation whether at 
home or abroad, she mingled a good de- 
tective 's satisfaction in some clever 
pursuit, which deprived villainy of its 
almost certain prey and landed the vil- 
lains sometimes in the strong hands of 
civil authorities. One such experience 
she described to me as follows: Hour 
after hour, on a tedious day trip, she 
had watched two well-dressed girls who 
had been much in evidence and had 
finally made the acquaintance of two 
men evidently belonging to the terminal 
city which the train would reach after 
dark. 

'If I had tried,' she told me, 'to warn 
those girls of the probable intentions of 
their new friends, they would, no doubt, 

63 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

have resented the suspicions and inter- 
ference of an officious old maid. But 
I knew our " Travelers' Aid" secretary 
would meet that train, and when it 
pulled into the station, I walked down 
toward the front of the car and said to 
a nice looking old gentleman and lady, 
" Please block up the aisle so those two 
girls can't get off till after I do." 
There on the platform stood Miss B. 
6 ' Get hold of those two girls behind the 
old lady and gentleman," I said to her 
and walked on and let the machine 
work. I looked back as I got into the 
car and saw her talking with the girls. 
The two men had disappeared. The 
next day, Miss B. told me that she had 
sent for the girls' fathers and they were 
going home all right. Like this? Oh, 
yes, all the time.' 

64 



IN THE NEW UNITED STATES 

Some of the students had to use a 
steamboat line en route to their school, 
and one time, when she was visiting 
them, two of them told Miss Gage of a 
midnight visitor to their stateroom on 
their up trip. He had been frightened 
away by an unexpected light as the sud- 
denly awakened girl in the upper berth 
snapped on the electric switch. So 
scared and sleepy was she that all she 
could remember as an identifying clue 
was the color of the marauder's hair. 
When next in the headquarters city of 
the steamboat company, Miss Gage 
sought out the president in his office. 

1 Your boats aren't safe for my girls 
to ride on.' 

'I know it. Tell them not to use 
them. I know what they 're like. ' 

65 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

'You've got to make them safe for 
my girls. ' 

'Well, you come back next time you 
are in the city. ' 

The president was aroused to do a lit- 
tle detective work on his own account 
and sent for the crew who had been on 
that boat on the date she cited. They 
appeared in his office and he read them 
a lecture on the reputation of the boats 
in general and their responsibility for 
improving it in particular. All the 
time he was looking at the men lined 
up bareheaded, before him. There was 
only one head of hair that tallied with 
the information Miss Gage had given. 
Finally the president said : 

'It's up to you men, and to make you 
understand I'm in earnest, I'm going 
to lay some of you off.' He began by 

66 



IN THE NEW UNITED .STATES 

discharging the suspect then and there, 
and later on had the whole story from 
the young fellow, and a chance to help 
him become a decent man. 

Before the prohibition advance in 
the Northwest, Oregon was leading in 
hop raising. Aside from any discus- 
sion as to the ultimate destination of 
the hops — and it is hard to believe that 
a demand for domestic and baker's 
yeast would require Oregon alone to 
produce 25,000,000 pounds of hops an- 
nually — she knew that there was moral 
danger involved to the pickers. The 
opportunity to earn much money in a 
brief time was calling students, city 
girls, and whole families from the coun- 
try, as well as thousands of others of a 
more roving type, to the great hop- 
picking fields each September. News- 

67 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

paper advertisements appeared in en- 
livening detail. 

' Wanted — 1,000 pickers for 



Hop Field. We pay $1.10 per 100 
pounds. Perfect accommodations, good 
food at city prices, fine whiskey, dance 
five nights in the week, evangelists on 
Sunday.' 

The Oregon State Committee got per- 
mission to set up a tent as a restaurant 
and social center which, with Frances 
Gage to manage the affair, was the re- 
deeming influence in what might have 
been a moral catastrophe. She learned 
the ' talent' available among the pickers, 
and organized evening concerts. She 
came into personal relations with peo- 
ple who needed advice from a sensible 
Christian woman more than they 
needed money or food. As manager of 

68 



IN THE NEW UNITED STATES 

the dining room, one day she settled a 
strike, and, still later, when the cooks 
failed to live up to their agreement, she 
discharged the whole force of men, 
telephoned to Portland for more help 
and took charge of the culinary depart- 
ment with such skill that the hungry 
horde of pickers got their meals on time 
and never knew anything had happened. 
It was the ' returning missionary' who 
did this, and who beguiled the drudgery 
of some of her volunteer helpers with 
stories of the Turkey she knew and 
loved. 

Every generation has had some 
workers of her spirit, known or un- 
known. This prayer of one of these old 
worthies she had appropriated and used 
in public services : 

69 



THE KOAD AHEAD 

O Eternal God who hast created me 
to do the work of God after the manner 
of men, and to serve Thee in this gen- 
eration, and according to my capacities ; 
give me Thy grace that I may be a pru- 
dent spender of my time, so as I may 
best prevent or resist all temptation, 
and be profitable to the Christian com- 
monwealth ; and, by discharging all my 
duty, may glorify Thy name. 

Take from me all slothfulness and 
give me a diligent and an active spirit, 
and wisdom to choose my employment, 
that I may do work proportionable to 
my person, and to the dignity of a Chris- 
tian, and may fill up all the spaces of my 
time with actions of religion and char- 
ity; improving my talent intrusted to 
me by Thee, my Lord, that I may enter 
into the joy of the Lord, to partake of 
Thy eternal felicities, even for Thy 
mercy's sake. Amen. 

She was in constant communication 
with her friends in Asia Minor and fre- 
quently saw in America old pupils and 

70 



IN THE NEW UNITED' STATES 

others, chiefly Armenians who had emi- 
grated hither. Neither the land nor its 
people were out of her thoughts, and she 
was now thinking of them in terms of 
the Young Women's Christian Associa- 
tion. In the Far East national com- 
mittees and boards of native women as 
directors of city Associations, as well 
as teachers in schools, were thinking of 
young women in national terms. She 
believed that in the Near East emanci- 
pated women might also lead a Turkish 
national movement, in which school- 
girls and women in cities and villages 
either burdened with luxury or harassed 
by poverty, should also find the life more 
abundant which her own Saviour had 
said He came to bring. 



71 



CHAPTER IV 

THE LAST STRETCH 



CHAPTER IV 

WHEN a Christian woman weighs 
one heart's desire against an- 
other equally good, sometimes the dis- 
appointment of choice is avoided. God 
gives her both. 

This is what happened to Frances 
Gage. She longed to return to Turkey, 
but she wanted to work through the 
Young Women's Christian Association. 
There were no local secretaries in the 
thirty Turkish Associations which had 
been organized from time to time dur- 
ing the last twenty years. The student 
groups were chiefly guided by the 
American missionaries and teachers 
who had been Association members 

75 



THE KOAD AHEAD 

' back home' and the city groups, espe- 
cially in Syria, were led by English and 
Continental missionaries, after the 
fashion of parochial branches as they 
had known the Christian Associations 
'back home.' There was no national 
committee nor any certainty as to what 
kind of a secretary might be needed. 
Yet affairs so shaped themselves that 
she returned to Turkey in 1913 to visit 
her friends and became the first Young 
Women's Christian Association secre- 
tary there. 

After all, pioneering in an old land is 
only a little harder than pioneering in a 
new. 

That she was coming back to a Tur- 
key greatly altered in the last fifteen 
years she knew well. That was one 
reason for wanting to come. Turkey 

76 



THE LAST STRETCH 

had begun to move. The status of 
woman had advanced. She could gain 
a better education and use it more freely 
than before. Women and children 
were being employed by native and for- 
eign firms, in rug and tobacco and other 
manufactories. The young married 
women were being carried away by un- 
worthy social ideals. ' The world is too 
much with us/ Frances Gage quoted 
more than once. 

Women served as members of the 
provisional committee appointed to 
pave the way for a permanent organiza- 
tion of the Association movements, 
young men's and young women's. 
Whether their new secretary was a 
feminist or not, she certainly had the 
courage of her convictions to differ 
from a man's point of view: 

77 



THE KOAD AHEAD 

'When I asked Mr. what he 

thought my traveling allowance should 
be for a year, he said $1,000, but that 
is a man's estimate and is too large, of 
course. ' 

'I met the agent of one of the large 
tobacco firms on the steamer, and he saw 
to it that I had immediate entrance to 
the factory. The manager is anxious 
to do all that can be done physically for 
the thousands of girls they expect to 
employ, and is quite ready to give us 
entrance for other influences, though 
the girls are so rude and bold that he 
speaks hopelessly of results. He is, 
of course, wrong V Equally, of course, 
women must make the investigations 
upon which any new or comprehensive 
women's institution could be solidly es- 
tablished. 

78 



THE LAST STRETCH 

She began a tour of the whole field 
after a winter spent with Miss Willard 
at Marsovan, in the 'King School for 
the Deaf/ founded as a memorial to 
their mutual friend, Marlie King, the 
only school for deaf mutes in the Otto- 
man Empire. She wrote to Carleton 
friends that she really did not want to 
undertake this journeying, that she had 
knocked around so long in the great 
Northwest that she did not fancy doing 
it over the rough roads and mountains 
of Turkey. But a younger woman 
could not do it. She had command of 
the Turkish language without further 
study, and, of course, she was going! 
It must have been because she had just 
then celebrated her fiftieth birthday — 
she was born October 14, 1863 — that she 
emphasized the point of age. 

79 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

But it was a mighty parish and one 
hard to cultivate, into which she entered 
in March, 1914. 

Now to travel by a Turkish wagon — 
an araba — does not mean that one be- 
gins by mounting the vehicle, but by 
preparing, according to the following 
recipe, the vehicle before mounting: 
First a wire frame at the back, over 
which a red comforter is tied — this 
makes a back and keeps out wind ; two 
wool mattresses in the bottom to keep 
the floor warm and make seats; over 
this a steamer rug with a soap-stone and 
hot water bottle ready for action ; toilet 
accommodations, alcohol lamps and 
lunch box. Two suit cases were placed 
across the front between the coachman 
and his fare. The gentry could then 
climb in through window openings 

80 



THE LAST STRETCH 

about twenty-five inches square, adjust 
cushions, more steamer rugs, and give 
the order to drive on. 

Miss Willard went with her on the 
first itinerary beginning with the well- 
known sixty miles from Marsovan to 
the harbor at Samsoun. From Sam- 
soun they went by boat to Constanti- 
nople, by boat and railroad to Adaba- 
zar, by railroad, boat and railroad to 
Brousa, and so on to Smyrna, Adana, 
Tarsus, Beyrout, Baalbek — for the an- 
nual meeting of missionaries of Syria 
and Palestine, engaged in secondary 
school work — Aleppo, Aintab, Marash, 
Talas, Caesarea and Marsovan. Does it 
not sound like the missionary journey 
of that original traveler who set out 
from Tarsus? 

During this trip of eighty days, they 

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THE KOAD AHEAD 

traveled twenty-five hundred miles; by 
sea, ten days ; by wagons, twenty days ; 
by horseback, two days ; twelve different 
times they were able to use railway 
service. Only once did they require 
escort, that was on their horseback trip 
over the Taurus Mountains. 

Strange doors of unexpected oppor- 
tunity opened right and left, not for 
Association organization in every in- 
stance, but for helpfulness to girls. 
From one Turkish normal school 
under government auspices came an 
invitation to lecture on pedagogy to the 
senior class ; in a large Greek Orthodox 
school for girls Miss Gage's advice was 
asked regarding self-governing clubs as 
a way of meeting the great problems 
opening up in the lives of young girls, 
and here an attempt was made to adapt 

82 



THE LAST STRETCH 

some of the Camp Fire honors to the 
needs of Turkish girls; in a Gregorian 
Armenian school, the priest presided at 
a Sunday meeting, attended by four 
hundred women and girls, blessing the 
people, leading in their chants, and 
introducing Miss Gage who spoke in 
Turkish. 

To the first annual meeting of the 
Union of Christian Associations in the 
Turkish Empire, which convened in 
Constantinople, the women's secretary 
brought a stirring report. Although 
none of the schools she saw in Asia 
Minor could claim college rank, yet 
their graduates were certain to be called 
on as leaders in their communities in 
every region of Asia Minor and 
southern Europe. Hence they were 
urged to form their own cabinets and 

83 



THE KOAD AHEAD 

committees, calling upon the American 
teaching force, chiefly, for an advisory 
officer. In this way, independence of 
character and initiative in work might 
be reached. These student members 
carried on mission study classes, using 
the regular American text books; they 
made contributions for ' foreign mis- 
sions' and sent them through the 
Woman's Board of the Interior in 
Chicago, Illinois, U. S. A. ; they devised 
social service which expressed itself 
through teaching the industrial girls 
working near the school ; they had Bible 
study and evangelistic meetings, devo- 
tional services led by members; and 
summer vacation extension for which 
plans were made long in advance. This 
sounds very much like America, does it 
not? But here everything was poly- 

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glot, the model constitution and pledge 
cards for full and fellowship members 
were asked for in Turkish, English, Ar- 
menian and Greek. 

Not so uniform were the so-called city 
Associations which she found in nearly 
every sizable center. Alike, however, 
they were in this, that none had a main 
building or all-round activities, and all 
hoped for trained leadership some day 
from America 

So much for the first survey. 

With part of her parish thus known, 
there was still an important interior 
trip to be made. This was arranged for 
the autumn of 1914, and although war 
had broken out, she maintained that 
there was no unusual danger in travel- 
ing at that time. She did have to own 
up to the greatest difficulty in securing 

85 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

a good team, harness, and wagon, as 
nearly everything had been comman- 
deered in the mobilization of the troops. 
Miss Gage's courier on this trip proved 
to have commandeering gifts of his own, 
which he used with a free disregard for 
the ninth commandment. Some of his 
extravagances were mere figures of 
speech, as that a certain station was 
forty times as high as Marsovan (the 
recorded altitude of which is twenty- 
three hundred feet), but his explanation 
to strangers, at one time, that his pas- 
senger was the president of the Mar- 
sovan schools, or an inmate of the 
harem of an army officer, at another, 
brought her consternation instead of 
amusement. They drove through fruit 
orchards denuded before their time, and 
along solitary roads, which would have 

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THE LAST STRETCH 

been filled in days of peace with trains 
of loaded camels and donkeys. At 
times, they started at half past two or 
three in the morning and slipped out 
from the dirty khan before the other 
travelers were awake, out into the open 
country where mountains, enveloped in 
misty clouds, seemed to entice them on. 
At the end of the first week, she was 
in Sivas, the capital of the Villayet, in 
which Marsovan is located. Here the 
American Board has a splendid system 
of public schools attended by eleven 
hundred Armenian pupils and culmin- 
ating in a Teachers' College for men 
and a High School for girls, both resi- 
dential. But not for these and other 
school girls alone did Frances Gage's 
heart go out in compassion, but to the 
three thousand young women and little 

87 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

girls working in rug factories, from ten 
to fourteen hours a day, and earning 
for that cruel span of time, from five to 
twenty-five cents. 'I often think/ she 
wrote us, 'of the wise way Jesus intro- 
duced Himself and his gospel to the 
people, by doing the thing they so piti- 
fully needed when He healed their sick. 
I think now, if He were here, He would 
just find a way to rest all these tired 
little bodies, and to give them some good 
food and then tell them to keep them- 
selves pure and good through love to 
Him.' 

To the school girls in Sivas as else- 
where she had conveyed the western 
spirit of working and playing together. 
People who object to well-bred Ameri- 
can undergraduates indulging in a 
' college yell/ will be relieved to notice 

88 



THE LAST STRETCH 

from the following report that the club 
yell has suffered a sea change en route 
to Turkey and has been softened to a 
'trill/ 

Sivas, Turkey, February 19, 1915. 

Dear Miss Gage : 

As it was your and also our desire, I 
am going to write you about our four 
clubs, what they have learned and done 
till now. 

One of the clubs called Jasper is led 
by Miss Sara Khacherian, and is study- 
ing Oriental politeness; they have 
learned how to be polite in the family, 
in societies and in any place. Once 
they prepared a social and invited the 
other three clubs. . . . They have their 
trill and motto which is 'Work and 
Shine. ' 

The other one, led by Miss Armenouhi 
Shahrigian, is studying hygiene. They 
have learned how to keep their whole 
body clean and to have a good position 
of body. They have learned also how 

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THE KOAD AHEAD 

to take good care of babies, how to wash 
it, how to feed and clothe it. They are 
yet on that subject. Their motto is, 
4 Duty before Pleasure.' The leader 
has not prepared yet the trill, but she is 
going to do it. Their name is Sapphire. 

The third one has story-telling as the 
subject of their learning. The stories 
are chosen from the Bible, from the 
American history and from traditions. 
Their motto is, 'Do Your Best/ and 
their name is Jacinth. 

The fourth one that is composed of 
the girls of fifth class is led by me. It 
is a little library society in which they 
study the Armenian writers, about the 
short history of Armenia and the rules 
to write. Their motto is, ' To be a con- 
scious Armenian,' and their name is 
Margaret or Pearl. 

All the clubs are very good ; they love 
their work and are trying very hard to 
do their best. They give ten paras a 
month. Miss Pice bought for them 
symbols, each having the colors of their 
name. 

90 



THE LAST STRETCH 

Give my greetings to all Y. W. C. A. 
members there, and for you receive a 
sincere love. 

From your friend, 

Zabel Vahooni. 

Even her intrepid spirit saw that the 
visitation beyond Harpoot must be 
abandoned and she pushed back to Mar- 
so van for the first i war winter. ' It was 
not their isolation, nor the fact that 
mails, even though safe, reached them 
irregularly, that troubled them ; nor the 
way that factions or local officials ig- 
nored agreements made by higher au- 
thorities — ' individual men are mean by 
nature/ was an incidental explanation 
for that — these did not bring such dis- 
tress of heart to Miss Gage and her col- 
leagues, as did the destitution of the 
people from whom food, lamp-oil, sew- 

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THE KOAD AHEAD 

ing machines, cloth, all kinds of sup- 
plies had been taken under excuse of 
martial law. 

The little Young Women's Christian 
Association in the city of Marsovan, 
with Miss Gage standing back of it, 
opened up a lace industry which gave 
employment to three hundred poor girls 
and women, and for which she stripped 
the market of thread which was selling 
at fifteen cents a spool. And this when 
the younger women were not allowed 
by their mothers-in-law — those en- 
forcers of etiquette — to be seen on the 
streets even bound for an Association 
meeting. Good social form dictated 
that they should stay in the house and 
mourn over their anxieties and troubles. 
She was also chairman of a committee 
that carried on gingham-weaving for a 

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THE LAST STRETCH 

hundred women who could be taught to 
do bobbin-winding and weaving, and 
she was implored to go out to other 
towns to set on foot similar relief there. 

This first war winter occupied her at 
the student Association, too. Never 
had the religious interest been more 
genuine in the girls' school. Fifteen, 
at least, joined the church and many 
were learning from their secretary how 
to be personal evangelists. Such was 
the state of things when she went down 
to Constantinople in the summer of 
1915 for consultation on Association 
affairs. 

Every girl who has sympathized with 
Evangeline as she has read the story of 
Longfellow's heroine, who was driven 
from home with the people of her vil- 
lage, has thought that the exile of a 

93 



THE KOAD AHEAD 

whole colony was the incident only of a 
past and barbarous age. Alas, that war 
continues the barbarous customs of 
other generations even into this twen- 
tieth century. 

It was under the guise of war that the 
old persecution of Armenians by Turks 
broke out again that summer. But ex- 
ile rather than open massacre was the 
method used. Place after place, to 
which Christian school girls had re- 
turned home, was reached by the order 
for deportation. 

There was always a choice offered. 
'No, I cannot be false to my Lord,' an- 
swered the president of one of the stu- 
dent Associations, when her relatives 
were turning Moslem and she was im- 
plored to do the same. And she held 

94 



THE LAST STRETCH 

a last meeting with the school girls be- 
fore they all left. 

Another graduate of that very com- 
mencement time was sought by wealthy 
Turks for a bride. She very quietly 
mounted her ox-cart with her mother 
saying, 'I can never deny my Lord. 
Was I not president of the Christian 
Association V 

From Marsovan first the men and 
boys were carried off, then the families, 
old and young together destined for the 
desert, a month's journey away. Then 
a demand was made for the Armenians 
at the American Mission and on the 
tenth of August the campus was in- 
vaded and the Armenians taken from 
the college and hospital. 

The next day Frances Gage returned. 

She returned to the very building 

95 



THE EOAD AHEAD 

against which the bullets had struck in 
the massacre of twenty years before 
when she had prayed for the deliver- 
ance of the girls in her class room. 
Now, all the school girls of Turkey were 
her charge, and she knew that from 
every Association the Armenian mem- 
bers were being dragged away to Turk- 
ish harems or to Syrian deserts. 

Yet her first service was to the girls 
of Marsovan, for at daybreak the outer 
gate was forced open and fourteen 
horse carts, most of them without 
springs, or seats, or covers, drove up to 
the school door. Protest or resistance 
was useless. Sixty-two students, young 
teachers and servants were packed in, 
provided with a few essentials and 
driven away and when the caravan 
halted at the edge of the city each was 

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THE LAST STRETCH 

asked to ' change her name,' with the 
direst prospects as an alternative to 
becoming a Moslem. Not one of the 
wretched, agonizing girls, huddling in 
the open carts behind the sheets, which 
they had adopted after the fashion of 
Turkish women, yielded to the offers or 
threats. 

Miss Willard and Miss Gage tried to 
go with them, but too late it was dis- 
covered that the transportation permits 
which they had secured were incorrectly 
made out. They might not even follow 
at a distance. It took six days to make 
them right. Then they fairly flew. 
Miss Gage was passing over the route 
of the last autumn; gendarmes and 
officers knew her. God used that ac- 
quaintance, and her knowledge of 
Turkish. 

97 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

On their pursuit, the two friends 
passed great trains of deported people, 
three thousand in each company, mostly 
walking ; some clinging to their loads on 
donkeys or ox-carts; women carrying 
babies in cradles on their backs ; old peo- 
ple with great bags of stuff on their 
shoulders ; men bound together in fours, 
just a reeling mass of humanity among 
the animals, fairly eating dust as they 
breathed. These people came from the 
Black Sea villages, and had already 
been on the way twenty-two days. 

Over and over again our friends lost 
hope ; they telegraphed the governor at 
Sivas to hold the girls until they could 
reach them, but he was out of town. 
They got on the track of them, but the 
party had been divided, fourteen were 
missing. One had professed the Mos- 

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THE LAST STRETCH 

lem faith and had been married to a 
Turk; the others were carried off by 
another road. ' According to Fate, as 
the people in this country would say, 
we reached Sivas just an hour before 
the girls. Forty-eight of our party are 
here, at the American School with us, 
waiting for the governor to return and 
give his answer as to their future. The 
president of the Marsovan student As- 
sociation is here, also the treasurer, 
the president of the city Association 
and many members.' This was her 
quiet word in the very intensity of sus- 
pense as to that future. 

After the momentous interview which 
set them free to return to Marsovan, 
she reports, 'You might say that the 
Boli courteously gave us back fifty 
girls/ But to her intimate friends 

99 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

she said, 'The result was directly of 
God, nothing we could do was even 
slightly adequate, so many had tried and 
failed. This was just one of God's 
miracles/ 

Since Constantinople was the head- 
quarters of the committee with which 
Miss Gage was working, it was natural 
that she should go into residence there 
for a time. Her office was established 
in the American Bible House in Stam- 
boul. From her desk window, she 
saw the minarets and domes and cypress 
trees relieving the line of high build- 
ings. In front of her stretched the 
Golden Horn full of war-pent craft. 
From the side window, the Bosphorus, 
blue and calm, and between the two the 
famous Galata bridge. Here was a 
center from which to work quietly to- 

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ward that true city Young Women's 
Christian Association, that expression 
of Christianity for which she believed 
all Turkey stood in sore need. 

Half her time she spent at Constan- 
tinople College, in the capacity of in- 
structor in curriculum Bible, and 
resident secretary of the student Asso- 
ciation of the college, for Anna Welles, 
who had come with her in that capacity, 
had retired. This marvel of the East, 
the only really standard college for 
women in the Empire, has received well- 
considered gifts from some of the lead- 
ing philanthropists of America, for con- 
struction, endowment and scholarship 
purposes. Although the imposing 
scheme of building is not yet completed, 
yet the administration building, dormi- 
tory, and other units are erected with 

101 



THE EOAD AHEAD 

such taste and perfection of equipment, 
that to a beauty-loving soul, the 
aesthetic conditions enhance all the other 
values, educational, social, and relig- 
ious. Miss Gage loved the intermin- 
gling with the cosmopolitan student 
body, and teacher as she always was, 
she loved the stimulus of other active 
intellects. But she was content there 
only because she could not travel over 
her wide field. The Association mem- 
bers were scattered and nothing could 
be accomplished. More than that, the 
status of a woman traveling alone for 
an organization of this kind in these 
days of unrest would be questionable. 

Eelief work here, as well as in Mar- 
sovan, was on her hands, but in May of 
1916, there arrived from Marsovan the 
entire staff of Americans. The mission 

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THE LAST STRETCH 

buildings had been requisitioned on a 
military order, as Marsovan was con- 
sidered to be in the war zone. Anxious 
days followed; with thoughts of the 
school girls, and the deaf and dumb chil- 
dren ; all the shepherdless people in the 
city were on her heart. When one ar- 
gument after another had failed to se- 
cure permits to return, Miss Gage, with 
that whimsical impulsiveness which was 
a dominant note in all her diplomacy, 
remarked: 'But I must go back to get 
my clothes. ' On that explanation, per- 
fectly reasonable to the officials, a party 
of five was allowed to leave ! By train 
to Angora- — on the 'Berlin-Bagdad 
Bahn,' then five days by wagon home 
to Marsovan. 

And then followed a strange and al- 
most serene experience in the midst of 

103 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

a capsized world. The greater part of 
their buildings was occupied by sol- 
diers ; two thousand sick men were be- 
ing cared for here. The girls and the 
deaf children had part-time lessons, be- 
ing assigned to help in the hospitals, to 
do sewing and knitting, and all kinds of 
patriotic service. They planted glori- 
ous gardens of yellow daffodils bor- 
dered with violets, and purple hya- 
cinths bordered with cyclamen, and red 
tulips bordered with daisies, and white 
narcissus bordered with primroses, and, 
in the middle of all, a plot of good green 
grass. They made wonderful preserves 
of egg plant and squash to eat with their 
war-bread and tea for breakfast, and as 
sugar was a dollar a pound, they boiled 
grape juice to a syrup to produce these 
confections. As kerosene cost three 

104 



THE LAST STRETCH 

dollars a gallon, they used a poppy-oil 
lamp for a substitute, although it was 
sticky and did not give much light. 
They rummaged in what was left of 
their friends' supplies to find shoes and 
sewing materials and other necessities, 
since shoes cost twenty dollars a pair, 
and were scarce at that. 

Their only fear was lest their fami- 
lies at home should be concerned for 
them, when they themselves were hav- 
ing 'the time of their lives.' They also 
called for reinforcements for ' weekly 
such questions are to be settled as 
should occupy the minds of interna- 
tional diplomats.' 

But not that way did relief come. 



105 



CHAPTER V 

THE EXPLORATION AND THE ENTERPRISE 



CHAPTER V 

COULD the girls who graduated in 
June, 1917, have known what sort 
of commencement was in store for their 
beloved head, their own sorrow would 
have been too blinding for them to have 
realized her advantage. It had come to 
the pass that Frances Gage's nervous 
reserve was exhausted and could no 
longer spur on her flagging physical 
forces. From the beautiful sleeping 
porch of one of the private houses of the 
station, she looked out on the wheat 
fields and the beloved mountains. A 
good Greek doctor and a devoted nurse 
were on duty. Miss Willard, who loved 
her, was with her. But at sunset, on 

109 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

Saturday, the fifteenth of July, there 
was a release of her spirit from her 
worn body. She met the supreme expe- 
rience of one who had joyfully denied 
herself, and taken up her cross and fol- 
lowed Christ; she came into his pres- 
ence and joy forever more. 

Twenty-four hours later, three hun- 
dred people, Turks and Greeks, and the 
pitiful Armenian remnant, came to pay 
honor to one who had understood and 
loved and forgiven and helped. Then 
she was laid to rest in the little ceme- 
tery beside Marlie King. All who stood 
there realized, the military officers, and 
the suffering poor, and the little chil- 
dren alike, that she had laid down her 
life for Turkey, and as a witness to the 
love of the Son of God for the Turkish 
people. 

110 



EXPLORATION— ENTERPRISE 

People would never forget her; they 
had not forgotten her, those in America 
who had known her as girl and woman, 
those in Turkey who met her in capital 
or province. 

'My mother always remembers her 
graduating oration, "The Philosophy 
of Effort," and much water has run un- 
der the bridge since 1890/ 

' Who was the lady with you last week 
at the Seminar V asked a world-re- 
nowned philosophy professor, habitu- 
ally oblivious to even his graduate stu- 
dents, much more to stray visitors. 

'Are you a friend of Frances Gage? 
She was the greatest woman I know.' 
So spoke an ambassador of our govern- 
ment. 

Tennyson must have known a similar 

111 



THE EOAD AHEAD 

spirit, for lie certainly wrote these lines 
of one like lier : 



Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, 

Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an end- 
less sea — 

Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right 
the wrong — 

Nay, but she aimed not at glory, no lover of 
glory she: 

Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. 

The wages of sin is death, if the wages of virtue 
be dust, 

Would she have heart to endure for the life of 
the worm and the fly? 

She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of 
the just, 

To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a sum- 
mer sky: 

Give her the wages of going on, and not to die. 



Why will she not die? Because she 
was vital to other people. No one for- 
got her, perhaps because she forgot her- 
self, perhaps because she was always 
projecting something that would count 

112 



EXPLORATION— ENTERPRISE 

in life values, and perhaps because she 
was so truly a whole-souled co-operator 
with God. 

The crises of her life were not 
wrought out in Turkey, but in Minne- 
sota when she righted her wrong rela- 
tionship to Jesus Christ, and when she 
decided to enter college. Having faced 
these issues in the kingdom of her own 
thoughts, no disturbances of nations, or 
races, or religions, or poverty, or dis- 
ease, or distress, or any other creature 
could frighten her. 

And what of the Road Ahead? 

She was the pioneer, but the end of 
the exploration is only the beginning of 
the enterprise. 

Where a false religion is notably un- 
just to women, the introduction of the 
true religion must emphasize righteous- 

113 



THE ROAD AHEAD 

ness to women. That is why the Young 
Women's Christian Association must 
not perish in Turkey, but must call for 
lives to reveal what Jesus Christ is, yes- 
terday, today and forever, and how He 
came to bring life more abundant to 
women. 

Frances Gage is still passing on this 
appeal of a woman from one of the in- 
terior cities : 

' Don't you see ? Didn't you see it in 
our faces? We are hungry for some- 
thing. We have had almost nothing in 
our lives but working and slaving. No 
one thought of anything for us but that. 
New opportunities are coming for our 
daughters and also new dangers which 
they do not know how to meet. We 
want something worth while to do. We 
are only waiting to be led. ' 

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